Perpetual Adoration of the Holy Eucharist
By His Holiness, Pope John Paul II
Perpetual Adoration of the Holy Eucharist
By His Holiness, Pope John Paul II
(Editor’s note: The following remarks were originally
delivered in
Spanish at the forty-fifth International Eucharistic
Congress, Seville,
Spain, June 1993.)
Beloved priests, religious men and religious women,
most beloved
brothers and sisters,
It is for me a motive of special
joy to prostrate myself with you
before Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, in an act of
humble and fervent
adoration, of praise to the merciful God, of thanksgiving
to the Giver of all that is
good, of supplication to Him Whom is always alive
to intercede for us.
“Remain in Me and I in you” (John
15, 4). We have just finished
listening in the evangelical reading on the allegory
of the grapevine
and the branches. How well is that page understood
from the
mystery of the living presence and life giving of
Christ in the Eucharist!
Christ is the grapevine, planted
in a chosen vineyard that is the
People of God, the Church. Through the mystery
of the Eucharistic Bread, the
Lord can say to each one of us: “He who eats My Body
and drinks My Blood
lives in Me and I in him” (John 6, 56). His
life flows through us just like the
living sap of the grapevine flows through its branches
so that they
live and produce fruit. Without a Real union
in Christ - in
Whom we believe and on Whom we nourish ourselves -
there can be
no supernatural life in us nor can we bear fruit.
Perpetual Adoration of Jesus in
the Blessed Sacrament has been a
connecting thread of all the acts of this International
Eucharistic
Congress. For this reason I express my congratulations
and my gratefulness of
those, who with so much pastoral dedication and apostolic
zeal, have carried
the responsibility of this Congress. In fact,
Perpetual Adoration...has
been an enriching feature and characteristic of this
Congress. I hope that
this form of Adoration, with permanent exposition
of the Blessed Sacrament, will
continue into the future. Specifically, I hope
that the fruit of this
Congress results in the establishment of Perpetual
Eucharistic
Adoration in all parishes and Christian communities
throughout the world.
...Yes, beloved brothers and sisters,
it is important that we live
and teach how to live the total mysteries of the Eucharist:
the Sacrament
of Sacrifice, of the Banquet, and of the permanent
Presence of Jesus Christ the
Savior....the several forms of worship of the Most
Holy Eucharist are
an extension and at the same time a preparation for
the Sacrifice of the
Mass and Communion. Will it be necessary to
insist again on the deep
spiritual and theological motivations of worship to
the Most Holy Sacrament
outside of the celebration of the Mass? It is
true that the reservation of the
Sacrament was made, from the beginning, in order to
be able to take
Communion to the sick and to those absent from the
celebration. But, as the
Catechism of the Catholic Church says, “for the deepening
of the faith in the
Real Presence of Christ in His Eucharist, the Church
became aware of the
meaning of the silent adoration of the Lord present
under the Eucharistic
species” (n. 1379).
“Know that I am with you all days
until the end of the world”
(Matthew 28, 30). These are the words of Christ
Resurrected before
ascending into heaven on the day of His Ascension.
Jesus Christ is indeed
theEmmanuel, God-with-us, from His Incarnation until
the end of
time. He is in an especially intensive and close
way in the mystery
of His permanent presence in the Eucharist.
What power, what
consolation, what firm hope does the contemplation
of the Eucharistic
mystery produce. It is God-with-us that makes
us participants of
His life and launches us into the world to evangelize,
to sanctify it.
...The Eucharist is indeed the “source
and summit” of all
evangelization (Presbyterorum Ordinis, n. 5); It is
the horizon and goal of all the
proclamation of the Gospel of Christ. We are
always guided toward the
Eucharist by word of truth, by the proclamation of
the message of
salvation. Therefore, all liturgical celebration
of the Eucharist, lived according
to the spirit and the norms of the Church, has a great
evangelizing force.
In effect, the Eucharistic celebration develops
an essential and effective
pedagogy of the Christian mystery: the believing community
is summoned
and gathered as the family and People of God, Body
of Christ; it is fed in
the double table of the Word and of the Eucharistic
sacrificial Banquet; it
is sent as an instrument of salvation in the middle
of the world. All
this in praise and thanksgiving to the Father.
Pray with me to Jesus Christ, the
Lord, Who died for our sins and
resurrected for our salvation that...the whole Church
will come out
strengthened for the new evangelization that the entire
world needs;
new, also for the explicit and deep reference to the
Eucharist, as the
center and root of the Christian life, as a sowing
and requirement of fraternity,
of justice, of service to all men, beginning with
those most in need in
the bodies and spirits. Evangelization for the
Eucharist, in the Eucharist
and from the Eucharist - three inseparable aspects
of how the church lives
the mystery of Christ and fulfills its mission of
communicating it to all
men.
May God grant that through the intimacy
with Christ in the
Eucharist may emerge many vocations of apostles, of
missionaries, to
carry this gospel of salvation on to the ends of the
world....Today the Church
is demanding a new missionary talent, a vibrant spirit
of evangelization,
“new in its ardor, in its methods, and in its expressions.”
“The hour is coming, and is here
now, when true worshipers will
worship the Father in spirit and in truth” (John 4,
23), Jesus said to the
Samaritan woman of Sicar. The adoration of the
Eucharist “is the contemplation
and recognition of the Real Presence of Christ, in
the Sacred Species,
outside of the celebration of the Mass...It is a real
dialogical encounter by
means of which...we open ourselves to the experience
of God...it is equally a
gesture of solidarity with the needs and with the
needy of the entire world”
(Document-base of the Congress, n. 25). This Eucharistic
Adoration, by
its own spiritual dynamic, must lead to the service
of love and of justice
for the faithful.
Before the real and mysterious presence
of Christ in the Eucharist
- a new “veiled” presence, since it is seen only with
the eyes of faith -
we understand the meaning the word of the Apostle
John who knew so much of
the love of Christ: “He who does not love his brother
whom he sees cannot
love God whom he does not see” (1 John 4:20)....
I have the firm hope that the evangelizing
zeal shall raise in
Christians a sincere coherence between faith and life
and shall lead to a greater
commitment of justice and charity, to the promotion
of some more
equitable relationships among men and among peoples.
From this congress
must be born...a strengthening of the Christian life,
on the basis of renewed
education in Faith. How important it is, in
the middle of the current
environment progressively secularized, to promote
renovation of the
celebration of Sunday Eucharist and of Christian life
on Sunday! The
commemoration of the Resurrection of the Lord and
the celebration of
the Eucharist should fill Sunday with religious content
that is truly
humanizing.Rest from work on Sunday, caring of the
family, cultivating spiritual
values, and the participation in the life of the Christian
community will
contribute to making a better world, more rich in
moral values, more solid and
less consummative.
...That the Virgin Mary that in Seville and in this
holy cathedral
church is honored with the title of Our Lady of the
Kings, impel us and guide us
to meeting Her Son in the Eucharistic mystery.
She who was the true Ark
of the New Covenant, living Tabernacle of the Incarnate
God, teach us to care
with purity, humility, and fervent devotion Her Son,
Jesus Christ, present
in the Tabernacle. She, who is the Star of Evangelization,
support us in our
pilgrimage of faith to carry the Light of Christ to
all men, to all
people. So be it.+
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“With this apostolic trip I come to celebrate, above
all, Jesus in the
Blessed Sacrament, Who gives Himself to us in the
Eucharist as the
expression Infinite Love, the mystery of our faith,
the fountain of our Christian
life...”from the Holy Father’s arrival talk at the
San Pablo Airport